One evening in Tehran in 1980, my grandfather got an anonymous tip that the Islamic Republic of Iran wanted him dead.

That night, he, my grandmother and my 15-year-old mother fled their native Iran on a last-minute flight to Heathrow with the help of a forged passport. With two tightly packed suitcases, they made it out. Eventually, my grandfather’s ingenuity allowed them to immigrate to Australia after three years spent in asylum-seeking purgatory in London. Together, my family built a fresh life in Sydney. We survived.

But not everyone is so lucky.

Celebrations have broken out across Australia, Iran and the world after the Ayatollah’s death– and for good reason.

There’s no doubt that Ali Khamenei was the head of one of the most murderous regimes in modern history. From innumerable state-sanctioned executions, torture and imprisonment of innocent civilians to a despotic rewriting of Iran’s state reality and external narrative – all the way to my own family’s exile from their homeland – it is clear that his death is not a tragedy.

However, I worry that, for the people of Iran, Trump’s illegal war could........

© The Guardian